Help: Can't play ANY videos any more

Right, first of all my pc used to be fine, it would play any video type with any file, dvd's films video clips anything. About a week ago something has happened and i have no idea what it is, Now when i try open any video file with any program my pc freezes and every 5 or so sec, comes alive for a millsecond then freezes again, this carries on and on. I end up rebooting to stop it.

Ive done virus scans, adaware scans, spyware scans, all clean. Reinstalled all codecs, still happens. I have changed nothing to do with my hardware and everything used to play fine. Any ideas on what it could be or if you want to know any more info please reply. Thanks for your help.

 

Safe mode?

 

Completely forgot about safe mode, just tried it, videos work fine in safe mode.

 

You reinstalled codecs, did you also reinstalled VGA driver?

 

ah thats a point i installed new graphics card drivers that came with Battlefield 2 demo. But surely newer drivers wont make it not be able to play videos?

 

They won't change that dramatically no, even if it were a bug it was probably posted on your driver's manufacturers site